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Human remains

Request for Repatriation of Human
Remains to Tasmania

Minutes of meeting
of the Trustees - March 2006

5.1 The Board discussed the claim
from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Inc. (“TAC”) for the
repatriation of two ash bundles in the Museum’s collection
(Oc.1882,1214.1 and Oc.1882,1214.2) having regard to the Trustees’
power under s.47 Human Tissue Act 2004 and their policy on human
remains dated 3 October 2005.

The Board were satisfied that, on
balance of probabilities:

1. The bundles contained the human
remains of Tasmanian Aboriginal people who died less than 1000
years ago; and they were bound up in animal skin, with which the
remains were so mixed up as to render separation undesirable,
indeed probably impracticable;

2. Had the traditional treatment of
the remains not been interrupted, they would probably have been
subject to eventual mortuary disposal within the ancestral
landscape of the deceased;

3. The interruption of the mortuary
disposal of the remains had taken place in a manner inconsistent
with the traditional practices of the community of the
deceased;

4. The TAC was the sole recognised
modern representative of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community; it had
ancestral continuity with the deceased; and was endorsed and
supported by the Australian Government;

5. The bundles had been studied and
recorded and information concerning the beliefs and cultural
practices they represented had been extracted and published, and
was available to the public;

6. The bundles did not provide
information of value for the study of human beings that would be
lost if the bundles were transferred;

7. Although it was not possible to
know what investigative processes might exist in the future, no new
information could be extracted from the bundles using current
scientific techniques;

8. The bundles were of cultural and
spiritual significance to the Tasmanian Aboriginal people and it
was understandable that the continued postponement of mortuary
disposal might be the cause of considerable grief to the Tasmanian
Aboriginal people; and therefore that,

9. As the human remains of deceased
members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community who would have
expected to have been laid to rest in their ancestral landscape,
the cultural and religious importance of the ash bundles to the TAC
would outweigh the public benefit to be derived from their
retention in the Museum’s collection provided they were now
subjected to a mortuary disposal in accordance with Tasmanian
Aboriginal tradition.

In these circumstances the Trustees
agreed that it was reasonable and appropriate that their policy
presumption in favour of the retention of human remains vested in
the Museum’s collections should not apply to this claim; and that
the two ash bundles (Oc.1882,1214.1 and Oc.1882,1214.2) should be
transferred from the Museum’s collection to the TAC pursuant to
s.47 Human Tissue Act 2004 on a date and in a manner to be
determined by the Deputy Director in consultation with the TAC, on
the presumption that the remains would then be disposed of in an
appropriate mortuary fashion.

1. Web
announcement

Request for the Repatriation
of Human Remains to Tasmania

In accordance with our policy on
Human Remains, we are publishing the dossier relating to the above
claim received from Tasmania. Please note that it includes a list
of correspondence, but not the correspondence itself. This is
because we do not have permission from the authors of the letters
to publish them.

If anyone wishes to make any
comment, could they please write, by 20 March 2006 to:

Andrew Burnett
Deputy Director
The British Museum
Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DG

3. Final
Dossier

4. Press
release

The passing of the Human Tissue Act
in 2005 enabled the Trustees of the British Museum and other
national museums to transfer human remains out of their
collections.

The Museum’s Trustees had long
recognised that human remains from the modern period represent a
special case raising particularly difficult issues. The Museum was
therefore fully and positively engaged with the process which led
to the drafting of the relevant clause of the new law.

The Trustees have welcomed this new
power which has enabled them for the first time to give serious
consideration to a claim made for two cremation ash bundles. The
claim is made by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre: the TAC has made
several previous claims which could not be considered until the law
was changed in 2005. The Trustees are therefore pleased to announce
that, at their meeting today, they have decided to transfer the two
Tasmanian Aboriginal cremation ash bundles to the Tasmanian
Aboriginal Centre in response to the claim from the Centre made
last year.

The two bundles, each containing
some ash from a human cremation site, are wrapped in animal skin.
They were acquired by George Augustus Robinson in about 1838
(Robinson was appointed as conciliator of Aborigines in Tasmania in
1828). They were taken at a time when the Aboriginal population of
Tasmania was suffering greatly from the impact of the European
settlement, resulting in substantial population loss. The bundles
entered the collection of the British Museum only later via the
Royal College of Surgeons in 1882.

Ethnographic evidence collected by
Robinson at the time indicates that bundles of this sort were used
as amulets against sickness by their owners, and that they were
highly valued for their efficacy. Their acquisition by Robinson
represented an interruption in the process which would have
ultimately led to the remains being laid to rest.

After taking independent expert
advice on the matter, and according to their published policy, the
Trustees came to the view that the cultural and religious
importance of the cremation ash bundles to the Tasmanian Aboriginal
community outweighed any other public benefit that would have
flowed from their retention in the collection. The objects have
been studied, photographed and published in previous decades. It is
unlikely that, given present scientific techniques, their retention
in London for study will yield any further information of
significance.

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, leading
human rights lawyer and the Trustee who led the discussion, said,
“The Trustees are clear that the removal of the cremation ash
bundles from the collection is the right course of action. The
Museum looks forward to continuing to work with indigenous
Australian communities in furthering the worldwide public
understanding of Australian aboriginal culture, both past and
present. The British Museum is currently developing a new
Australian and Pacific Gallery to open in 2008.”